Time for a new phone (AT&T)

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wavewerx

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 8, 2008
Messages
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My Blackberry Bold 9000 just bit the dust and I need a new phone. I've already scratched all the Blackberry's off the list because I don't like where the company's focus is at now plus their new phones suck - nothing as powerful as my Bold, and the new torch is a frankenstein of a product (My dad has one.) RIM isn't focusing on their business customers any more and instead now focusing much more on the consumer rather than pro-sumer market (IMO)

I'm looking at the Samsung Captivate and have had some experience with it. My roommate has one and loves it.

BUT the Moto Atrix is right around the corner... with it's Webtop features, HDMI playback and docks, it looks like a damn [H]ard device. Should I wait out for it? Pick up a burn phone for a month and try it out? Or anyone have any other suggestions for a phone?

Corporate Exchange is a must (As much email, calendar and contact sync as possible without a BES. I'm coming from a BES and I absolutely loved it.) and it needs to have a great web browser. The obvious PDF reader and office suite mini editors are also a must. Terminal / VNC / RDP apps are a plus.
 
I have a Captivate. IMO right now it is the best phone on AT&T. So if you're shopping for a phone now, it's really the only choice. Now, it has had it's teething problems: random shutdowns, slow/innacurate GPS, Android's periodic (extremely rare) sending texts to the wrong people, compounded by Samsung and AT&Ts total lack of support and updates.

EDIT: Not saying that I've had those issues, except the GPS, but I've seen them reported...

For me the Captivate is a toy. The development community has taken the not so elegant software and the excellent hardware and turned it into a fast, slick device. As shipped though, or if you can't mod because you need it for work, it's a little rough.

If you can wait, I would, but not for too long.
 
Decibel said:
Android's periodic (extremely rare) sending texts to the wrong people
Click to expand...

It's not really periodic as it is based on use. If you are typing a text and you receive and incoming text, then switch to that one, there's a chance it'll send the previous text to the wrong person. This bug tends to happen with more text conversations going on simultaneously, eg. tweens who text 1000 times a day to all their friends simultaneously, instead of actually learning anything in school, accidentally send nude pics to their parents instead of everyone at school. Definitely an issue that shouldn't exist though.

Aside from the Atrix, I haven't heard of anything for AT&T that's really exciting for Android. Most still seem to be on Verizon. There's the HTC Inspire 4G and the Samsung Infuse 4G, but they're BARELY any different from phones last year and don't even have a set release date yet while the Atrix is coming next month.

Web browser is kind of a non-issue as even if you don't like the default browser, there are just as many options for android as there are for Windows. I think pretty much all the big smartphone OSes have some sort of VNC/RDP app. I know for a fact that both iOS and Android do.

I really, really wouldn't get a Captivate at this point (I am a Captivate owner, fyi). With a custom ROM and some jupiter.xml fixes my tracking actually works quite well, but the fact that I had to jump through hoops to get it to work when Motorola and HTC and Apple and Nokia and Sony don't seem to have these problems is ridiculous. Also, we still haven't gotten our official 2.2 update. 2.3 is out on the Nexus S. 3.0 is very likely to come out on the XOOM tablet before we even get 2.2 (Feb). It just seems silly to me that we'll be three versions behind very soon with no relief in sight.
 
Wow, I'm actually a little surprised hearing that about the Captivate.

Should I consider an iPhone? I've used them before in the past but never owned one (or an iPod Touch).
 
I love my Captivate and getting a custom Rom is so easy and so much better than any stock rom that to me , if you do not want to wait for the Atrix, I would go with the Captivate.
I got mine at 1.4Ghz right running the Paragon RC4 Rom btw.
 
I have an iPhone4 that's jailbroken.

It will probably do you just fine! It performs very well for me.

But I would do what I could to get that Atrix. So I vote for a burn phone now and get the Atrix when it becomes available.
 
I had a Vibrant (Captivate on Tmobile) and I would say definitely wait till the end of the month and try the Motorola Atrix out.

I just sold my Vibrant on craigslist and can't wait for the atrix.
 
For AT&T service, the iPhone 4 is the best/fastest phone on that provider. I was a huge Blackberry fan. I honestly went through 3 months of withdrawals and finally appreciate how much faster it is over the blackberry. Looking forward for 4g network on the dual processor iphone 5 :)
 
Look at the WP7 handsets, you may love em. I'm one month in with my Samsung Focus and it's still doing great.
 
justbsn2 said:
For AT&T service, the iPhone 4 is the best/fastest phone on that provider. I was a huge Blackberry fan. I honestly went through 3 months of withdrawals and finally appreciate how much faster it is over the blackberry. Looking forward for 4g network on the dual processor iphone 5 :)
Click to expand...

I'd like to hear more about your iPhone experience... It may be a possibility.

As it is right now I'm going to try and hold out for the Atrix.
 
So I would say to wait for the Atrix, But the damn thing is a Motorola & imho there smart phones dont live up quality wise to htc & Samsung.
 
I say iPhone 4, but for one main reason: software updates.

So far, we haven't really seen any Android phone get new features for more than a year. If you bought with Android 2.1, be thankful you get 2.2, let alone 2.3 or beyond. And certain manufacturers, like Samsung, almost show contempt for you after the sale: it will often give you one update a few months in and then drop support like a rock. Yes, you can root to load custom firmware, but you're compromising your phone security to get there.

For all of Apple's fussing over what you can do on a phone, at least it supports your phone for a long time. If you bought an iPhone 3GS in June 2009, you can still run any new feature in iOS that isn't dictated solely by hardware. I'd expect an iPhone 4 to still get proper support until at least 2012.
 
I just bought an iPhone 4 but the Atrix is really tempting an early upgrade. I'll have to play with it, but I like Android a lot more than iOS from what I've seen.
 
I have a 3gs. I just bought a captivate off ebay, it was GREAT. I liked android much more than iOS and the ability to hack it and flash it is really fun. I had to return it unfortunately because it was a older one with the shutoff problem, but as soon as I get my refund I am going to buy another captivate on ebay without the problem..
The GPS wasn't all that great, but thats just a samsung problem.

I think if you are a more techy person who likes to hack stuff or customize stuff then you will like android more than iOS. If you just want a phone that you just want to buy and let it be get the iPhone

As for your situation OP, I suggest waiting for the atrix 4g review to come out. Then make your decision. I think HTC is also releasing a android superphone on att soon. Not sure though
 
liveify said:
I have a 3gs. I just bought a captivate off ebay, it was GREAT. I liked android much more than iOS and the ability to hack it and flash it is really fun. I had to return it unfortunately because it was a older one with the shutoff problem, but as soon as I get my refund I am going to buy another captivate on ebay without the problem..
The GPS wasn't all that great, but thats just a samsung problem.

I think if you are a more techy person who likes to hack stuff or customize stuff then you will like android more than iOS. If you just want a phone that you just want to buy and let it be get the iPhone
As for your situation OP, I suggest waiting for the atrix 4g review to come out. Then make your decision. I think HTC is also releasing a android superphone on att soon. Not sure though
Click to expand...

:confused::confused:

You can jailbreak an iPhone easier than rooting an android phone.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. Looks like I'll be waiting till mid March for the Atrix. I was able to build a Franken-berry Bold 9000 out of an old one and got some working parts for it and have a phone now that can limp on into the future. Looking forward to the Atrix!
 
mobusta1 said:
:confused::confused:

You can jailbreak an iPhone easier than rooting an android phone.
Click to expand...
True most of the time. But IMO there is more fun to be had with android because of all the different roms, kernals, and modems. With the iPhone there really isn't anything like that, just cool tweaks and apps like biteSMS, lockinfo, etc. Most of which can be done on android without rooting.
 
Look also for the new AT&T Blackberry Torch 2 that is being released in the Summer. Significant hardware upgrade with a smooth OS6.

An associate from work has a the new Droid Pro. He likes it a lot, as it replaced his long time BB Bold.
 
Mthr1 said:
Look also for the new AT&T Blackberry Torch 2 that is being released in the Summer. Significant hardware upgrade with a smooth OS6.

An associate from work has a the new Droid Pro. He likes it a lot, as it replaced his long time BB Bold.
Click to expand...

I'm moving away from RIM and Blackberry. They lost me when they started advertising against me with Black Eyed Peas songs and social networking buffs on their phones. That, and the Torch just sucks as a phone anyways.
 
I've got a Captivate & some mixed feelings about it. It's an uber Android phone, but Samsung has issues.

They are crap for support, good luck in Samsung ever pushing out an update for anything.
The GPS is crap, very few people with Captivates ever get decent GPS signal, ever.

I'm thinking I'll probably look at HTC for my next Android phone when I'm eligible for an upgrade.
 
Oddly enough, this weekend I had great results out of my gps. Quick and accurate locks, even when I was in an area where I barely had an edge connection.

I've been using the Google Maps live wallpaper, it seems to do alright updating where I am too.

I've been frustrated a number of times with the gps, but it's gotten me where I need to go every time.

I've actually gone back to a pretty stock set up recently... Just JH7, rooted and AT&T decrapified.

Still I stand by my original post, the Captivate is some great hardware, limited by Samsung's crappy software and support. Head over to XDA, they'll set you up. :D
 
Fallon said:
They are crap for support, good luck in Samsung ever pushing out an update for anything.
Click to expand...

The Vibrant was updated to 2.2 by samsung kies. I'd put part of the blame on the carrier also for not releasing 2.2 yet on other Galaxy S phones.
 
wavewerx said:
I'm moving away from RIM and Blackberry. They lost me when they started advertising against me with Black Eyed Peas songs and social networking buffs on their phones. That, and the Torch just sucks as a phone anyways.
Click to expand...

The Torch is the best blackberry of I've ever used, granted it's still like being the smartest retard. I have had a torch since December and I like it a lot. It was free and I wanted to wait for better phones but for what it is, I love it.
 
After owning my Captivate I will never buy a Samsung phone again at least until they prove they are actually going to support their products.

My GPS is unusable on the Captivate. It's simply horrid. The stock filesystem on the Captivate is slow, the Touchwiz UI sucks, etc. Unless you are willing to use custom ROMs and GPS is not a big concern for you, stay away.
 
If at all possible, wait for the Atrix. I've got a Verizon Incredible and will be jumping to an Atrix as soon as it's available. I learned the hard way that talk + data at the same time is a good thing that can't be done with Verizon.
 
I like my HTC Inspire. Atrix is a powerhouse but felt like a plastic toy.
 
http://www.engadget.com/motorola/atrix-4g-review/

New (few days old) review on the Atrix. It's an overall good reveiw but some of the points it brings up are kind of distubring... Locked bootloader, Mozilla Firefox instead of Google Chrome (in WebTop mode), WebTop instead of 'Chromium OS', poor implementation of LaptopDock, Sub-3G speeds on a advertised 4G phone, Froyo + Motoblur...

My next phone is still undecided....
 
wavewerx said:
http://www.engadget.com/motorola/atrix-4g-review/

New (few days old) review on the Atrix. It's an overall good reveiw but some of the points it brings up are kind of distubring... Locked bootloader, Mozilla Firefox instead of Google Chrome (in WebTop mode), WebTop instead of 'Chromium OS', poor implementation of LaptopDock, Sub-3G speeds on a advertised 4G phone, Froyo + Motoblur...

My next phone is still undecided....
Click to expand...

Most of the cons in that review were due to the sluggishness of the docks. The phone itself however got a great rating. Heck Josh Topolsky, the head editor at engadget, is using the atrix as his main phone!
 
I have a Captivate running Phoenix 5.2 ROM with Generation X theme and it's bloody awesome. GPS works perfectly.

Nobody here on [H]ardforum should be running stock samsung rom. If you are, gtfo, or stop bitchin about gps / froyo / lag issues that are solved with superior roms.
 
Captivate looks like a great phone - but it's already dated. Atrix is running a dual core 1ghz processor. Even if the docks and accessories are overpriced and not worth it I should at least still be buying new-er technology...
 
Decibel said:
I have a Captivate. IMO right now it is the best phone on AT&T. So if you're shopping for a phone now, it's really the only choice. Now, it has had it's teething problems: random shutdowns, slow/innacurate GPS, Android's periodic (extremely rare) sending texts to the wrong people, compounded by Samsung and AT&Ts total lack of support and updates.

EDIT: Not saying that I've had those issues, except the GPS, but I've seen them reported...

For me the Captivate is a toy. The development community has taken the not so elegant software and the excellent hardware and turned it into a fast, slick device. As shipped though, or if you can't mod because you need it for work, it's a little rough.

If you can wait, I would, but not for too long.
Click to expand...

I had a Captivate for a couple week and it isn't even close to the best phone on AT&T. The Iphone4, Inspire, Atrix, and Aria are all much better phones than the Craptivate and that's not even including the WP7 models. Forget about the slow file system, has Samsung ever gotten around to fixing the GPS? Has Samsung ever gotten around to rolling out the Froyo update fot the Captivate yet? The worst thing about the Captivate is Samsungs lousy support. It's just inexcusable not have the GPS working yet.
 
I went ahead and purchased a Atrix. I've got a thirty day return policy, amirite? So far it's a really quick Android phone. I've come from blackberries and palms so I'm getting a little used to it...
 
wavewerx said:
http://www.engadget.com/motorola/atrix-4g-review/

New (few days old) review on the Atrix. It's an overall good reveiw but some of the points it brings up are kind of distubring... Locked bootloader, Mozilla Firefox instead of Google Chrome (in WebTop mode), WebTop instead of 'Chromium OS', poor implementation of LaptopDock, Sub-3G speeds on a advertised 4G phone, Froyo + Motoblur...

My next phone is still undecided....
Click to expand...

All the dock stuff is irrelevant imo... The accessory is just overpriced and as part of a closed Moto system it's just a dead end anyway; it's a novel concept, perhaps a peek of the future, but otherwise just a gimmick imo. For roughly the same price you can get a netbook or a nice Brazos system (price comparison hinging on whether you're buying the laptop dock separately or w/the phone).

Now the phone itself looks amazing... Anand's preview went into far more detail than Engadget's so-called review, they give a good big-picture outlook on devices during their reviews but they're otherwise pretty worthless.

Hardware-wise the Atrix is just head and shoulders above any other phone right now... The screen uses a penTile matrix which may bother some, but it's also a higher res screen than any other Android phone so it's not a bad tradeof. Tegra 2 flies, plenty of memory, solid camera, HDMI out, and a BEEFY battery. I've loved tweaking the heck out of my EVO, but I'd probably put up w/a locked bootloader in exchange for that large (but slim!) battery on the Atrix.

Glad to hear on your latter post that it's working out for ya, slap LauncherPro or ADW on that bad boy and you won't look back.
 
After using it for half the business week and the entire weeknd - out of town, on call at work, and at a gig (musician) - I've gotten some good heavy use out of the phone...

+ I really love all of the Apps for ths phone. Mobile gaming is great. Killed alot of downtime doing this including some social gaming with some other Android phone friends.
+ VNC / RDP app from Wyse (Pocket Cloud) is awesome. Access to my server and home computer is super quick and runs great. Easily a reason to keep the phone.
+ Browser is great. Quick and easy to navigate but I still hit the same issue where pages get to 97% complete and sit there. The same happened on my BB Bold 9000 so it maybe a AT&T thing in my area.... or the same webpages I visit. I use my mobile more often than my desktop / laptop and run it pretty hard
+ I finally can play videos on my mobile device. My Blackberry would require a battery pull everytime I wanted (choppy, no HD / HQ) youtube video to play (If it did at all)

- Compared to my Bold, messaging sucks. (On the stock ROM) I can't change any text sizes or display settings to view more messages and have less wasted space. I'm used to seeing 20+ one line messages in my inbox on my BB and having ~7 isn't cutting it.
- Same lines - No thread view. My BB Text messages and Emails looked real similar. They are obviously different on Android. Don't like it.
- Full message details (To: From: CC: BCC: Subject: etc) require pressing a button do drop down. No setting to always dispay.
- Minutes delay in notifications from anything - exchange, gmail, facebook, etc.
- Calendar doesn't have 100% view of day. Scrolling up / down is necessary. booooo
- GMail isn't in the universal inbox - WTF?
- Facebook only notifies you of messages - not wall posts, likes, photo comments, etc. I don't NEED to know this information, but I like when it comes to me. I decide what I pay attention to.
- I realize I can go on a little bit more about the messaging / calendar functions of the Atrix vs. the BB but I think you get the picture... not good.


Basically, I miss my BB for everything that was great about it and love my Android phone for everything my BB sucked at. While VNC, flash, great (better?) web browser, and apps are awesome to have, I don't know if I can trade that off for what I feel is sub-par messaging service.

Comments?
 
Try Handcent or Chomp as alternatives to the stock messaging app... I've heard good things about both (lots of customization options), tho frankly I've been satisfied w/the stock messaging app on my HTC phone. I'm not sure there's any way to integrate text messaging w/e-mail or interface with them thru a similar UI tho, there's probably an app that'll do it but I haven't heard of it.

Popular widgets like Pure Messenger will let you see both in the same (scrolling) widget feed tho, if that appeals to you... Personally I only use it for my FB feed, I like e-mail for each of my two or three accounts to be segregated. I highly recommend all the Pure widgets, the messenger one will display many of the FB activities in the feed that the FB app doesn't notify you of... Frankly the FB app is just kinda shoddy, I almost prefer using Pure + the mobile site half the time; altho I don't spend a lot of time interacting w/FB.

I haven't had any notification delay issues besides those from the official FB app (which barely work half the time). Text, Gmail, and even Yahoo mail (thru their own app) notifications for me have been pretty much instantaneous. I'm using an HTC EVO tho so I really couldn't tell ya whether the network or ROM could be at fault...

The calendar UI could definitely use some improvement, I'm right there with ya... HTC actually butchers the stock app somewhat w/o any redeeming improvements (besides lock screen notifications). I should probably look into some of the alternative calendar apps but I figure the stock one would probably do the most reliable syncs... I use my to-do list (GTasks + Pure Calendar) more than I do my calendar anyway.

Plus, as I alluded to before, I actually interact with the calendar almost exclusively thru the Pure Calendar and Pure Grid Calendar widgets at this point. I do a lot of press-and-hold to edit events but beyond that it's a lot more seamless than the standard calendar interface imo. I have a 2x2 scrolling widget w/my to-do list (synced w/GTasks to my Google account) AND my calendar events at the bottom (can be reversed) on the main home screen and a 2x4 scrolling widget w/a grid calendar on another on of my screens. The Pure widgets can be added in just about any size tho.

Having never used a BB full-time (beyond helping a client w/account setups occasionally) I can't give you a more focused opinion on some of the messaging pros/cons but maybe some of what I mentioned might help ya make your life easier on Android, good luck.
 
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